Yes.
Some of us are old enough to remember the Crack Era and the data doesn't agree with his premises. It's just the Myth of the Good Old Days and our selective biases at work that ignore how bad the past really was. Hell, in the 80's, the average number of murders for major cities were in the thousands or close to it. In 2012, it is barely breaking half of what it was back then whether it was violent or property crime.
In NYC, the last time the number of murders were sub-1000 before 1998 was in 1967. In 1990, 2607 people were murdered. In 2010, 877.
Don't take my word for it. Look on the Bureau of Justice Statistics website.
http://www.bjs.gov
Or look up the crime rate for your city or state on the Disaster Center's website that tracks crime since 1965.
http://www.disastercenter.com/
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Look up Cultivation Theory* and Availability Heuristics** in regard to crime. Crime has been going down across the board since the mid to late nineties.
* = the more TV, specifically local TV news, you watch, the more you're inclined to believe crime/violence is higher than the data actually shows
** = the more quickly we are able to remember a specific instance of something occurring, the more likely we are to OVERESTIMATE its occurrence
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However, we still have more work to do.
I too am old enough to remember the Crack ERa
Nothing was said in his comment about the good old days
things have gotten better but as long as B.S exist we need to try and fix it
and right now the statement regarding the current state of plenty of our youth does ring true
There is opportunity out there for us and we need to use our heads to get it.
I am aware of the facts you dropped and thank you for linking it so that others can see words backed up with fact.